There’s no place like home for a provincial experience.
The Okotoks U15 Tier 1 Oilers will look to parlay home ice advantage into on-ice success when the puck drops on the Hockey Alberta Provincial Championships, March 21-24 at Okotoks Centennial Arenas.
“We had a really solid start and a couple of bumps in the road partway through the season,” said Oilers head coach Travis Bouchard. “Actually, it helped us more than anything to really reinforce what we were working on throughout the year, which was primarily working on playing as a team.
“Nice part is when we hit those bumps in the road, the kids learned from it and moved forward from it.”
Okotoks got notice in December it would be hosting after tireless work from its parent group put together the winning bid package at the start of the season.
In the Central Alberta Hockey League, Okotoks finished with the third best record in the division.
Okotoks made it to the semifinal round in the CAHL playoffs, losing out to Airdrie who in turn were defeated by Chestermere, the other league representative at provincials.
“The guys are really grateful we get a second opportunity to get into provincials,” the coach added. “We’ve talked to them a lot about, ‘Hey, we’ve got a second chance here, let’s make the most of it.’”
With a bit of a layoff in between playoffs and provincials, the team prioritized rest before shifting back to intense practice situations.
“The last two weeks we’ve set a progression up, put a theme up every week on what we want to work on,” Bouchard said. “And building up to provincials.”
The Oilers are pooled with Trails West, Sherwood Park and Drayton Valley.
Pool B features Knights of Columbus, Chestermere, Grande Prairie and the Raiders Hockey Club out of Calgary.
It will be a combination of familiar and new opposition for the Oilers.
“We hosted our own tournament this year and Drayton Valley came down, we had a really good game with them, they’re a very strong team and we’re looking forward to having another chance to play them,” Bouchard said.
“Chestermere, we played them in exhibition, a couple of times through our regular season and they also attended our tournament. We match up pretty well with Chestermere and would love to meet them in the playoffs at provincials here.”
Okotoks kicks off its competition on March 21 at 5 p.m. versus Drayton Valley.
The opening ceremony for the competition is March 22 at 1:30 p.m.
For more information, go to haprovincials.ca.
